


Hopeless Teenage Heart

by kiaronna



Series: YOI One-Shots [13]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Lawyers, Alternate Universe - Teenagers, Fluff, Lawyers, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-15
Updated: 2017-04-15
Packaged: 2018-10-19 09:26:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10637013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kiaronna/pseuds/kiaronna
Summary: Well-adjusted adults do not usually consider a tipsy teenage encounter in a bathroom to be the peak of their sexual experience, especially if that encounter was mostly chaste, closed mouth kisses and sighing into each others shoulders as they sat on the cool, real marble of the hotel’s sink basin. Yuuri might not be a well-adjusted adult.Viktor and Yuuri meet in a high school debate competition, and then later as lawyers in New York. Some things change with time, but others never do.Lawyer/debate kid AU, short one-shot.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by a prompt over on Tumblr, and the song A Night to Remember by Betty Who.  
> PS, I made them 2 years closer in age. I think a teenage relationship between them would be pretty difficult, if they were four years apart.

Well-adjusted, social adults do not usually consider a tipsy teenage encounter in a bathroom to be the peak of their sexual experience, especially if that encounter was mostly chaste, closed mouth kisses and sighing into each others shoulders as they sat on the cool, real marble of the hotel’s sink basin. Even the kissing had followed a solid thirty minutes of giggly review of the hotel’s selection of expensive lotions and aromatic hand washes, rubbing the peach sugar scrub into each other’s hands and up their forearms like a pair of children. Yuuri’s hair had been damp with rain, the result of an impromptu run together through the hotel’s garden courtyard, and Viktor had toweled it off tenderly (“We can’t jus’ use the bathroom towels like this,” Yuuri had hiccuped. “They’re complimentary,” Viktor had promised, “shhh, shh. There.”).

Yuuri might not be a well-adjusted adult.

  
The men’s bathroom was marble, surrounded by mirrors strung with dim white bulbs, like an old Hollywood dressing room. High up on the far wall were broad windows, slick with rain, casting the room in wavering, watery shadows, like they were in an ocean cave. Like Yuuri was underwater, temporary. Holding his breath as long as he could before he gasped for air and Viktor was gone.

Viktor was 17 and a senior and beautiful and had defended his position as national high school debate champion just yesterday, while Yuuri was a stuttering, chubby sophomore whose godmother had prodded him into joining debate to “instill some confidence and fight in” him. If stumbling over his words for two years earned him one night with Viktor Nikiforov, Yuuri would have been willing to do it all over again. These ideas, of course, were nothing that passed through drunk Yuuri’s mind– no, he’d had the time of his life, cuddled up to the man he admired in an expensive hotel bathroom the debate competition holders had paid for, mouthing M&Ms off pale fingertips.

  
“Do your Dramatic Interpretation piece for me?” Viktor asked, and so Yuuri had hopped to the floor and done a swaying, soft recitation of On Love: Eros and then On Love: Agape, a set of love poems from the 1800s that Yuuri had warmed to after being initially embarrassed about performing them in public. Dramatic Interpretation was easier than Lincoln-Douglas debates, or Public Forum; all emotion and vocal inflections, and JJ Leroy from the neighboring high school couldn’t interrupt or talk over him. So Yuuri liked dramatic interpretation, and so did Viktor if the way he hung off of Yuuri was any indication, tangling his long legs around Yuuri’s knees as they dangled from the bathroom counter, running one finger over Yuuri’s moving lips in fascination.

* * *

Yuuri hadn’t really understood love poems, as a round-faced fifteen year old that had only been through his first growth spurt. Now, as a twenty-seven-year old family lawyer, he still remembers the lines of both Eros and Agape, and with hazy longing recalls the youthful encounter in a hotel bathroom during a national debate competition. He’d already come to terms with it– he wasn’t going to forget Viktor or that night, even if holding onto the memory and treasuring it was childish, and that was the way things were. He’d never interact with the other man again in anything but his dreams, especially because following Viktor’s domination of high school debate competitions he had apparently rocketed his way through undergrad and then law school, landing a prominent position in a New York criminal law firm when he was twenty-seven and subsequently becoming the public face of it. Viktor surrounds New York, blue eyes sparkling from billboards and flyers, and Yuuri definitely has not saved any of them or downloaded a commercial where Viktor promises deeply that he is reliable, and takes great care of his clients. He definitely did not end up living in New York because Viktor had proclaimed it was the liveliest city he knew, and Yuuri wanted to know what that life was like.

Yuuri’s afternoon meeting with Celestino, the firm’s top partner and his boss, is fairly uneventful. He gathers up his case files, and is about to head off to his desk, when Celestino catches his arm. “By the way. Do you remember the child custody case you were on, the Taylors?” Yuuri frowns, shuffles his papers. 

“Did something happen with the daughter?”

“No, no,” Celestino waves a hand, “but the father is involved in a big criminal case now, and the Feltsman group wants to meet up with us and go over old notes, any information we can give them.” The Italian flicks through his Blackberry, clicks his tongue, holds it up. “Wednesday at three. Bring your notes and meet with us.”

Wednesday is a rough morning. Yuuri stumbles in with a huge tumbler of coffee, messy hair, and a suit and tie that don’t really match, according to his roommate Phichit. He wonders briefly if things could get worse, and because he is Katsuki Yuuri, they do.

Viktor Nikiforov is sitting at the meeting room table across from him and Celestino, fingers steepled and gaze locked onto Yuuri’s face as he tries to squeeze words from his unwilling throat about the case. When all is said and done, Viktor and Yakov stand, gather their briefcases, and begin to head out. Yuuri is already planning out the shortest route to the nearest restroom to try and pull himself together when Viktor turns around, winks, and says, “looking forward to working with you in the future. Want to grab lunch tomorrow, Mr. Katsuki?”

“Sounds like a great way for our groups to collaborate,” says Celestino. “You should go, Yuuri.”

“Maybe we shouldn’t,” says Yuuri’s mouth, because his brain is saying nothing that’s appropriate for public consumption. This statement is followed by choked off word that Yuuri is fairly sure doesn’t exist in any language. So much for debate teaching him how to be a better speaker.

“Nonsense!”

* * *

Viktor lunches at a classy bistro, in his suit and tie, which is exactly what Yuuri would have expected out of him. What he would not have expected is the other man sliding in beside him in the booth, knee to knee.

“Uh,” says Yuuri. “There’s– a booth seat across from me.” Viktor spares the opposite seat a disinterested glance, then tosses his briefcase into it and scoots closer to Yuuri.

“I can’t believe I found you, after all these years! What are the chances? So you’re a family lawyer now. I should’ve expected that. You were always great at making emotionally compelling cases.”

“Uh,” says Yuuri. Viktor Nikiforov is also great at making emotionally compelling cases. And bluntly logical, technical ones. Yuuri is fairly sure that Viktor won a criminal case the previous day that netted him close to a million dollars from his client, which makes Yuuri fidget in his secondhand leather loafers.

A waiter appears, places their drinks, soups, and sandwiches on the table. Viktor offers him a spoonful of his own bisque, and Yuuri pushes back in the booth seat until his back hits the wall.

“You, um, remember me.”

The beaming smile only brightens exponentially. “Oh, you don’t remember me?”

“No, I do,” Yuuri corrects, which is an understatement. Yuuri does more than remember. Yuuri still obsesses over a teenage memory, daily.

“Good, good.” Viktor sips at his coffee, and Yuuri squints at him. His hair had been so long as a teenager. His fingers still have a ghostly memory of sifting through it, rain on the window a soothing hum in the background– Yuuri violently shoves a bite of sandwich in his mouth, almost choking on it. “So, let’s catch up. Tell me about what you’ve been up to.”

They talk for forty-five minutes, finishing lunch, and as they depart Viktor holds out one hand. Yuuri tries to shake it, and Viktor sighs and pulls him forward, fishing in Yuuri’s coat pocket with his unoccupied hand while Yuuri tries to focus on anything else. “Here. I’m going to put my number in your phone.”

“Okay,” Yuuri replies. It’s official. His brain has shorted out.

“I shifted around a meeting today to do this, but I’m usually not free on Thursdays for lunch. Would you be interested in Tuesday lunches?”

“I always eat lunch,” Yuuri replies, “every Tuesday.”

A smirk curls up Viktor’s lips, like he’s got Yuuri cornered, found some kind of evidence in a case he’s been hungering for for weeks. “Lunch with me, Yuuri. Here. Or wherever you’d prefer.”

“I– okay?”

* * *

 

The lunch habit quickly transitions to a dinner habit, and then to late night weekday episodes of Law and Order, because they are both terrible workaholics. On weekend nights, Phichit sits in a big, ratty armchair opposite them on the sofa while they watch movies and play cards, making lewd gestures at Yuuri every time Viktor has to reply to something on his work phone. Yuuri can only shake his head frantically. _No. No, Phichit, no we are not_. 

“M&M?” Viktor asks, looking up from his phone quickly, just as Phichit is making a motion that would have any mother dragging him to church. Viktor, despite being a fully fledged adult that makes millions, eats an obscene amount of M&Ms, as far as Yuuri can tell. Pops them like pills in front of him. Yuuri holds out his palm for Viktor to tip the bag against, and glares at Phichit. He sorely regrets the bottle of rum that made him reveal his high school memory to his roommate.

“You know,” he says to Viktor over ice cream at Viktor’s significantly nicer loft apartment another evening, “we should probably actually talk about work during lunch, one of these days.”

“We do talk about work,” Viktor says, eyebrows furrowing. “Much more than any of my other friends can handle, actually.”

“No, I mean the Taylor case. You know, the reason the Nikiforov group started working with us?”

“Oh,” Viktor hums blithely, “I won that case months ago.” Yuuri drops his spoon. “While we’re on the subject of work, though, maybe you can give me advice.”

Yuuri sets down the ice cream. “Sure, Viktor. Anything you need, if I– well, if I’m qualified to give you advice.”

“I don’t want to be a criminal lawyer anymore.”

Yuuri is stunned. And then he thinks of their discussions of the morality of Viktor’s cases, of the way the other man answers his work Blackberry at 12am on a Saturday and complains that his hair thins more every time he gets only four hours of sleep. It makes sense, so much so that Yuuri is almost ashamed that he had never figured it out.

“Don’t get me wrong– keeping an innocent man from jail brings me an immense amount of joy. It’s just… well.”

“Most of them aren’t innocent,” Yuuri says quietly.

“Yes. When all I do is keep rich men from being imprisoned for crimes they did commit, it’s… not what I used to dream of. Still a rush, winning a case, but not quite the inspiration it used to be.” He looks around the loft apartment for a moment, takes in the artwork he’s picked out, the flawless and expensive minimalist decor. “You must think I’m crazy. I earn millions from what I do.”

“I don’t think you’re crazy.” He gently places a hand atop Viktor’s. “Not at all. Besides. A change in your focus could give you more time. My friend Yuuko, she switched her career, and was able to be with her husband and daughters while still earning the family’s income. You could spend more time with friends. Start a family.”

“Start a family,” Viktor repeats, voice immensely soft, and Yuuri has to move his hand back to his own lap, the skin contact suddenly burning. “You know, I never gave you an official tour of my apartment.”

“I think I’ve seen every room?”

“No,” Viktor says. Yuuri looks down at his melted ice cream, and moves to wash the bowl out in the sink. “Okay, tour time. This is Makkachin’s playroom.”

“Makkachin doesn’t need her own playroom,” Yuuri says, shaking his head. “Also, I’ve already seen this.”

“This is my linens closet.”

“I admit I haven’t seen this, but… why would I have?”

“This is my master bedroom. And this,” Viktor says, swinging open a door, “is my master bedroom’s bathroom.”

It’s mostly stone and glass, one ceiling-length mirror and a shower and tub with jets that look too complicated to actually use.

“Very nice, Viktor.” He is trying to stifle a smile, the laughter he feels bubbling up. “Thank you for showing off to me.”

“I’m not showing off,” Viktor says simply, “for once. I’m asking a question.”

At some time during the tour, their fingers have laced.

“I remember the last time we were in a nice bathroom together,” Yuuri murmurs, ducking his head.

“Do you.”

“Yes,” Yuuri admits, and squares his shoulders with nervous determination, “I think about it most days.” Especially on days when he wanted to kiss Viktor, the adult.

“Thank god,” Viktor breathes.

All of Viktor’s expensive soaps and care products are carefully organized on the sink counter. They end up on the floor.

A precious teenage memory– that’s something Yuuri will always treasure, but had been prepared to let fade away from his life. The new memories he’s making now, he’ll never have to.

**Author's Note:**

> And then Viktor goes and, like, becomes someone that sues companies for animal or human rights violations! BAM!  
> If you're a former debate kid and I got everything wrong, I'm sorry. I was not a debate kid.


End file.
